No Reason

December 4th, 2009, 2:31 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen

quatre jours jusqu'à mon coeur cassera.
je n'avais pas oublié. pas encore. jamais encore.

qu'est-ce qu'on aurait fait?
quelque chose. toutes les choses.
tous qui à moi
sont les memoires
les possibilitiés
les espoirs
les rêves.

dis-moi,
avais-tu oublié?
oublierais-tu?
oublieras-tu?

dis-moi, dis-moi.
---

Of course I haven’t forgotten. How could I forget? An irrevocable guilt that I can barely even begin to explain tears away at my heart each morning when I wake up because I know I’m one day closer. But closer to what? A day that probably doesn’t mean anything anymore, a day where I’m going to wake up at three in the afternoon again and head out when the sun is setting under the horizon, which is just the way I want it, yet at the same time I do want it to mean something and it kills me that I know it won’t.

What I said last night to you, I knew it would hurt, badly, and I knew the pain would sting you even harder by ignoring you completely for the rest of the night. I had phrased my wording carefully in my head for five minutes and debated whether or not to use it as a weapon with which I could strike you down. Why wouldn’t I? As always, you were discouraging me and my dancing endeavors, but, even though I knew it was just more of your playful banter, I was already on the edge, my soul having been long dissolved.

Both you and I know that there was no real justification to what I said, however. I didn’t say what I said to get you back; I said it just to piss you off, to shut you out. Even if you weren’t ragging on my dancing, I still would’ve found a similar way to take a huge shit all over the twenty months of our relationship. I’m back to my old tactics. You know, and I know, that that’s the way I am.

The question is why, why am I like this? I don’t know, and because of that I really hate myself sometimes.



When I was three or four, my parents took my brother and me to Disneyland. It was an extremely bright and sunny day, but the blazing heat couldn’t stop me as I ran around in shorts living every toddler’s dream. We stopped at a nice shady food court by a lake, and my mom and brother left my dad and me behind at a table while they ordered food. Along with the two of us she left us her sunglasses.

I deliberately dropped them in the lake.

My dad admonished me and cursed as he dipped his arm over the side into the murky water, and sensing that the lake was actually a lot deeper, he sat up and plunged his entire leg under the surface. As he fished for the sunglasses, he demanded to know why I did what I did, but I only stood there brooding, legs shoulder-width apart, arms folded, eyebrows narrowed.

Miraculously enough, he managed to retrieve them. When my mom came back with pizza, her warm smile soon turned to a frown when my dad told her what I did. She kneeled down to my level, and she asked, “Honey, why did you do that? You know I need my sunglasses because the sun is so bright today.” I glanced at the sunglasses sitting on top of the table.

I lunged for them and tossed them into the center of the lake with all my might. My parents and brother gaped in horror. I had won.

With the sunglasses gone, my mom bought an overpriced shitty little plastic orange visor from the gift shop and wore it for the rest of the day. In the family photo album, the change in accessory on my mom’s face is just as obvious as the change in her facial emotions before and after the visor.

When I flip through the photo album, all I see is the orange visor. When I try to remember the Disney Land trip, all I hear is my mom mumbling under her breath as she handed over the money for it. This has become my only memory of that Disneyland trip, and it is probably one of the earliest memories I have. It haunts me because I don’t know why. Why did I do what I did? I don’t recall being angry. In fact, I remember being excited about the pizza because I loved pizza. This incident is one of the many that makes me want to run into my parents’ room in the middle of the night and apologize when I wake up in a cold sweat, but my parents would probably have no idea what the hell I’d be talking about.



Actually, I do know why I’m like this (in regards to Trung), but I wish I didn’t because the reason is far worse than anyone could’ve ever imagined, so bad that it makes me hate myself even more. Sometimes I just wanna quit—not suicide, but rather, quit being me and live someone else’s life for a day or two. I’ve been trying to do that, but by the end of the day, I always return to this.